How Altruistic is Zuckerberg’s Internet Initiative?

For a number of months, social media mogul Mark Zuckerberg has been rallying the troops behind Internet.org, his initiative to bring connectivity to the developing world. Although internet for all might seem like a selfless gesture, there might be more to Zuckerberg’s plan than the availability of information and resources in developing nations.

Internet.org is part of an extensive campaign to make internet connections available to the 5 billion people on the planet who remain unconnected in the digital age. During an interview with David Kirkpatrick (author of “The Facebook Effect”), the young billionaire talked about the project’s aims to provide at least basic internet access across the developing world, to allow people to access email, weather, news, Wikipedi, and more. If they happen to decide to create a Facebook account once they’re online, we’re sure no one would be too upset about it.

In the interview, Kirkpatrick referred to Facebook as a “gateway drug” to the rest of the internet, which isn’t far from the truth even in the developed world.